There’s No Business Like . . .

A few years ago I answered a Facebook survey about acting and one of the questions was, “Have you ever had a role written especially for you?” I answered “No”, of course, thinking that was something that would never happen to me in my community theater career.  But, as life has a way of bringing surprises, it has happened.

My friend, Rhonda Roberts, member of my critique group and a regular contributor to Highlights for Children magazine, won Second Place Award in the Center on the Square one-act play contest last May. The award brought with it an invitation to have her play, No, Not Really, be a part of the theater’s Dessert Double Feature, a production of two one-act plays with a dessert bar.

It was then that Rhonda told me, “All the time I was writing this, I was thinking of you … how you would say a particular line.” Then she asked me to play the part of Alice, an aging mom who is showing signs of confusion and instability. When confronted, Alice tries to cover her mistakes by changing the subject, making a smart quip, or telling a long story.

This play is funny, but with some poignant moments. I love this role because it gives me room to stretch.  I’m afraid that as I have aged I have been type-cast as a feisty old lady.  I have loved the roles that gave me an opportunity to be more (The Dining Room, Lost in Yonkers, The Women).

Rhonda did a great job on this script bringing out the feelings on both sides of the issue. She is playing the part of Alice’s daughter, Katelyn.  Acting opposite a good friend can either cement or destroy a relationship. As to how that is working out, in the words of my character, Alice, “Everything is just fine, thank you very much.”

Three more performances next weekend, July 26, 27, 28. For ticket information visit the theater website www.centeronthesquare.org

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Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

Three Critiques – Some good, some not so much

The primary forms of entertainment for me are theater, reading, watching movies.  And this was a week for all three.

Friday night I saw Honk, the Center on the Square KidStage (sponsored by Land O Frost) summer production. This is a musical adaptation of the story of the Ugly Duckling.  After a month of theater workshop, the kids (grades K-12) were able to show their stuff in a professional-looking performance.  KidStage Kids were the actors and singers and with help they worked on lighting, staging, make-up and costumes.  The result was fantastic. The energy fairly radiated from the stage and if there was a fumble or missed cue, I never saw it.  Five stars for this great show by a bunch of talented young folks.

Land O Frost KidStage is an ongoing program at Center on the Square with classes twice a week during the school year as well as the summer workshop. For more information about KidStage go to www.centeronthesquare.com.

I finished reading John Grisham’s The Summons. I don’t read a lot of Grisham, but found this novel at Goodwill. It looked brand new and it’s shorter than most of his books so I took a shot.  I’ve seen most of his movies and usually enjoy them. While I did finish reading the book, which says something, I’ll have to rate The Summons “meh.”

My latest Netflix movie was Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, starring Steve Carell and Keira Knightley.  I was expecting a lightweight chick-flick and was pleasantly surprised by a movie that was both amusing and poignant. Steve Carell is so much better an actor than he gets a chance to be in Office Space. And Kiera Knightley always hold up her end of the deal. I recommend this movie. IMDb.com gives it a score of 6.7 (out of 10). I might rate it a little higher … but that works for me.

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Jodi Picoult

Why I Read Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult (pronounced Pe-koe, like the tea) wrote her first short story at age 5. She was published in Seventeen magazine while she was in college and was primary writer for DC Comics Wonder Woman Vol. 3.  She is probably my over-all favorite fiction writer.

As a reader, I find her books captivating – usually from the first paragraph – and gripping to the last page. As a writer, I love her voice and envy her skill at hooking her readers from the first paragraph and keeping them engrossed in the characters to the last page.

One thing that makes her stories so full of heart clutching moments is that she writes about subjects that are current and possibly on the edge of controversy.  Such as: teen suicide (The Pact); bullying and school shooting (Nineteen Minutes); Autism (House Rules); post-divorce ownership of the embryos (Sing You Home); euthanasia (Mercy); various medical ethics (My Sister’s Keeper); child abuse by a priest (Perfect Match); and stigmata, a phenomena recognized by some Christian denominations (Keeping Faith).

If you have read any of these books, you might disagree on what I named as the primary subject of the book. For instance Sing You Home (2011) deals with loss of a premature baby, how grief might alienate a couple rather than bring them together, gay relationships, evangelical Christians’ beliefs about the pre-born child.  All of Ms. Picoult’s novels incorporate many issues.

I have to admire her for the way she handles these delicate subjects, bringing out the very human feelings on both sides of a topic. Her technique of telling the story in more than one point of view lends itself to the success she has as a storyteller.

Because I am a writer, I think I am a discriminating reader. I pick up redundancies and discrepancies and see typos. This makes me a good editor/proof reader, I think, but a picky reader-for-entertainment.

I say that to say this: There is a J.P. novel I didn’t finish reading. I usually give a book 50-100 pages to draw me in and this one just didn’t make it. When I looked at the copyright date, I saw that it was written 20 years ago. It was actually her first novel –  before she honed her skills, I like to think.

Excuse the audacity in my review of a best selling writer. The point is that for the hard-working writer, our work should improve with each effort. We have all read recent novels by well-established writers who just phoned it in and relied on their name to sell the book. I don’t think Picoult has ever done this.

And that is why I read Jodi Picoult.

For a full list and reviews of Jodi Picoult novels, visit her Amazon Author’s page  here.

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Depth Perception

I got my first prescription eyeglasses when I was 15 years old.  I don’t remember the occasion for having my eyes tested. I wasn’t having double vision or headaches. And this was 1948, years before people were into “wellness” visits to health professionals. I was raised during WWII, when half the doctors were in the military forces. We didn’t call the doctor unless we were sick or had ominous symptoms.  Then he would drop by to check us out. But, I digress.

The eye, ear, nose and throat practitioner I visited found me to have astigmatism, which is an irregular curvature of the cornea. Also, some other malady with a long name that meant my depth perception wasn’t up to snuff. I might have trouble judging distance.  I didn’t think much about it at the time but it does explain a lot. As a kid, I could not hit a soft ball … or catch one unless it was lobbed to me so slowly I had time to think it over before trying to catch it.

NOTHING about sports came naturally to me. “She couldn’t hit a basketball with a tennis racquet,” was a comment that would apply. I might miss a volley ball coming right at me. And in other areas of my life, I often over-filled a glass of milk or wore bruises on my body from running into the edges of tables.

Of course, when I was a child, no one thought, “Bless her heart, she has no depth perception. Let’s make accommodations for her so she won’t be the last one chosen at recess.”  (For those of you who do not know what recess is, Google it.)

After the first week, the uniqueness of wearing glasses faded and I seldom put them on (I was a teenager, remember). But as I got older I wore them more often until I realized that although no correction in the lenses was visible to the naked eye, I could see better when I wore my specs.

I have to say that with the lenses my vision is corrected enough to improve my hand-eye coordination. I can thread a needle and insert a plug into an electrical socket. I can text a message if you’re not in a hurry. But I still can’t seem to swat a fly. My best bet is that the pesky insect will die of fright from WHAP that comes so close.

And now, 60+ years since that first pair of eyeglasses, I am completely sold on vision correction. I have bifocals for reading, tri-focals for the computer, sunglasses to keep out the glare and even older bent-up frames for watching TV in bed. And when I step off a curb that turns out to be higher than I thought, I have a ready excuse. It’s not that I’m getting older. I just have a little problem with depth perception.

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Larry Crowne

I have mention before how much I love Netflix, both streaming and dvds. While cruising around their site, I ordered Larry Crowne primarily because it stars Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts. I didn’t know they had made a movie together.  The one-line synopsis reads, “After losing his job, a middle-aged man reinvents himself by going back to college.”   Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) is also in this film.

It’s really a delightful movie. It just seems unusual to me is that it’s the sort of film these heavy dramatic actors might have made 20-25 years ago … think Big, Pretty Woman, or Amazon Women on the Moon. Tom Hanks in a chick-flick? in 2011?

Tom Hanks wrote (with Nia Vardalos) and produced this picture but, in my fantasy, I can hear him calling up Julia and Bryan and saying, “Hey, what are you doing next week? Let’s make a movie. Bring the kids. Come on … it’ll be fun.”  Because it looks like they probably had fun making this movie.

There are cameo roles by Cedric the Entertainer, Rita Wilson (Tom’s wife), George Takei (of Star Trek fame), and Chet Hanks (son of Rita and Tom). Mr Hanks also gave work to a lot of unknown or new-to-the-business actors, technicians and crew (credits rolled forever).

All in all, this effort turned out to be a good story about a how a guy whose life has stalled gets jump-started again … how a college teacher (Roberts) who has lost her passion for teaching finds she can still make a difference in her students’ lives. And it all happens without sex, violence or obscenities. How refreshing.

I definitely recommend this movie.

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